Check out the “How To” over at Instructables – HERE

If you happen to attempt this… seeing as they are tall and might burn unevenly, you are gonna want to make sure you don’t leave the room with one burning.


Epic! And for just under $10 with shipping over at Amazon – HERE

There are some other gun related lighters that I’ve seen, but most don’t even remotely resemble what they are trying to emulate.


Definitely something I’d like to have in my office.

There is no price listed on the artist’s site. I’ll have to drop him an email.

The artist Alexander Reh’s website – HERE

While we are on the topic of office furniture and decorations, I really want to get an inert M18A1 claymore (not a blue training model), and also one of those anti-tank hedgehogs.



Combined Ballistic Identification System

A system where the shell casing of a bullet, (or brass) from a fired round is supplied by a gun manufacturer in an approved container shipped with a new handgun that is shipped to the NY State Police when the gun is sold or if the new handgun is shipped to the Federal Firearms License holder, the FFL takes the gun to the State Police Lab to be test fired and the lab keeps the shell casing and the fired bullet.

  • The shell casing is scanned into a computer data base to be compared against shell casing recovered from a crime location.
  • This program has has NO success in NY while costing $4,000,000 to start and an estimated $4,000,000 a year to maintain or an average cost of about $200 per legal gun.
  • CoBIS only collects information from legal guns that are new and have not been linked to a crime and the size of the data base in New York alone is in 10s of thousands of guns and will, within the first 3 years included almost 66,000 data files with almost 22,000 new handguns being added each year. (Source)


  1. This program is been around for 8 years and has had no success… so why is it still sucking up millions of tax payers money?
  2. Does the shell casing always has to be matched to striations (marks from the guns rifling) on a bullet found lodged in something at the scene, and both of those tied back to the gun?  Or is it considered enough evidence if just two out of three are available?
  3. Why would someone that is legally buying a gun want to take the risk of being in a database such as CoBIS?
  4. Should we all take collecting our own brass at the range a lot more seriously if systems like this are going to be used to assign guilt?
  5. Doesn’t the firing pin, and barrel rifling slightly change over time with normal wear?  How is this taken into account?
  6. We know that criminals can pick up their casings at a scene, modify the rifling of the gun, modify the firing pin to produce a different imprint.  So why have a costly system that is rendered useless if even one of those happens?
  7. Since New York isn’t an impenetrable fortress, where nothing can get in or out. What use is this database if a criminal can just bring in a gun from another state to commit a crime?

Hat Tip: Say Uncle


4ga sure looks menacing!

More on Shotgun Shells at the Wiki – HERE


R Lee Ermey from the History Channel show Lock & Load:




Making your own:

What I Did:
I started off with my favorite set of ear plugs The Com-fit AB corded ear plugs. DB 26 rating.

Then took my Px4 outside and fired 2 rounds into the hillside as to retrieve 2 spent .40 s&w casing (winchester 165 gr target ammo; 100 rnds $30 @ walmart). all my other brass i pawned at the gun shop for a few bucks.

Took a small nail; and hammer (because im too lazy to dig out my fathers reloading equipment) and gently taped, from the inside, removing the primer from both shells.

using a drill bit fed into the hole in the ear plug (ment for the cord) and put the ear plug into the casing, bit thru the primer hole, and filled it with hot glue from a glue gun. (WARNING CASING WILL BECOME HOT; use a vice or gloves when doing this step)

now on the .40 i had to drill the primer hole out a slight bit as it was too small for the cord to fit through. i then threaded the cord in thru the rear of the casing and viola…. spent casing ear plugs. novelty and hearing protection brought together as one.

Note: cord is NOT needed; but helpful to keep from loosing them. Also it helps secure the ear plug into the casing as it might slide back out after the glue settles (in testing it was rare but did happen; some super glue on top of this wouldn’t go amiss; however with the cord i don’t have that problem at all)

Source – mXm Community